Posted
by
timothy
on Monday June 30, 2008 @01:46PM
from the an-excellent-run-by-smart-folks dept.

[vmlinuz] writes "After four years, 100+ shows and over 2 million downloads, the guys behind LugRadio, the irreverent Open Source podcast from England have decided to call it a day, with the desire to 'go out on a high.' The last ever show will be recorded at LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th and 20th July in Wolverhampton, England. There are also blog entries from the two long-standing members of LugRadio, Jono Bacon and Stuart 'Aq' Langridge." I hope the back catalog will remain available — LugRadio has since its start been one of the best online audio offerings out there.

I went to the first LRL and loved it, after following the banter for a while. sadly i was a poor student then, and didn't make the last one.

Thanks to LRL I met Mark Shuttleworth:D Thanks to LRL I watched about 20 people order a desert at an Indian confusing it with the main mean:D

I guess this gives the community a chance to reciprocate? Perhaps a new UK-based (humours of course!) Linux radio show with slightly more knowledgeable (on-topic?!) hosts? Unfortunately I find the show is too long for me to back jump into nowadays.

(I didn't mean to say they're not knowledgeable folk btw - only that each and every paintball I fired championed KDE and Slackware in return for all the bashing!:D)

Actually I found the fact they would go off on personal tangents or rants to be one of the more endearing parts of the show. There are other podcasts out there that cover Linux / F/OSS news and have guests, but most of them are far too sterile and professional as hosts. They'd do great on a *real* radio network or some such (aside from their content being fit to a niche), but they're not that much fun to listen to. The LR guys were funny as hell, and I've listened to most of the back episodes on various long road trips lately. I damn near ran off the road near Paducah because I got to laughing so hard.

Sorry, though, to the parent poster - Mr. Procter will remain my favorite of the hosts.

I'm definitely with you - the personal tangents make LR work so well! I guess after a while I began to notice gaps in the presenters' knowledge. They slowly became more and more evident, and I feel that many of the "i don't like"s are really "don't understand"s. Most shows will have the comical genius and the technical expertise, yet i find LR is group of like-minded comical hobbyists without a strong technical personality directing things.

Just imagine how balanced the show would be for the technical folk and the like-minded enthusiast if Jonathan Corbet was British and an LR presenter! (nb. I am an LWN fanboy)

The only problem is that I kind of disagree with what I'm typing, when I reread it back. LR is LR - it's hard to fault something so uniquely special. Having listened to a few perl related podcasts a few years ago to 'sample' the podcasting world (pardon the pun), I was a little dismayed by what the internet had to offer then: generally the more technical the cast and subject, the more boring and mundane they are presenting it. LR is great because it's like a Friday night chat show (after 9pm, you are permitted to swear on UK TV) a la Jonathan Ross, combined with the indefeasible personality like traits of Jeremy Clarkson. It's great comedy at the same level as it's technical representation.

I agree. I discovered the show after meeting Jono at SCaLE6X in February, and enjoyed it very much as I prepared to be at LRL USA to run the Ubuntu booth. I'm really going to miss the podcast, not to mention the LRL events. Where else can I make my mother proud by getting up on stage and being introduced by a pasty need in a thong? But seriously, it have me a vgance to hang out with a lot of other Ubuntu and Free Software enthusiasts, and I was looking forward to next year. I wish the four of them the

I mirror the back catalogue and have no intention of getting rid of it. I know other mirror maintainers have said the same thing. Talking to Aq on irc today he gave the impression that the main archive will be sticking around as well, so don't worry too much:)

I also quite like the off-the-wall humour of ctrl-alt-del [ctrlaltdel-online.com], which isn't as Windows oriented as it sounds. It's a bit like Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] (another recommendation) but with slightly different eccentric wit.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but I found the show unlistenably crude at times. There's no way I would recommend this podcast to anyone except perhaps Linux users in the Navy with some spare time on their hands and a tendency to giggle at long-in-the-tooth inside jokes.

I actually gave up searching for Linux-related podcasts because of this show.

In fact I started using a Mac a year ago and I'm very happy with where I'm at right now.

(Actually that last sentence was a complete lie, but it felt appropriate somehow).

I use Vista willingly, you insensitive clod.:-). Yes, it came pre-installed, and yes I would have preferred XP, but went ahead and got the machine anyway, holding my nose.Can I redeem myself by saying I run Linux on a PS3 (and on a PS2)?

I agree, the crass humour and inside jokes meant there was no-one I would have been comfortable suggesting this to.

It's also unfortunate that the last show will be a LugRadio Live broadcast. The regular shows generally have enough interesting content to compensate for the often tiresome gags. But the live shows are a different story. It seems they take special delight in insulting not only each other, but their guests and sponsors as well.

I think of them as the Top Gear (UK car show) of Linux podcasts. Personally I could have done with an edited version without all the inane chat so that I could listen to just the good bits. It was always meant to be like a chat you would have at a LUG, but also included some great interviews with prominent people.

I would also say that it was generally better produced than many podcasts. Jono and co are good speakers and it was well recorded, so was easier to listen to some others that were full of hesitatio

I've listened to them for years and have had some good laughs. Their style is crude, yes, but authentic and funny. Now we're left with The Linux Action Show, with the glossy, family-friendly, foolsafe "hysterical morning crew"-style humour which is so typical American. I will miss the bullocks that LugRadio was.

<quote>I went to a couple of meets a few years ago with a friend, stopped after getting thrown out of the pub because I was ~16. I'm now 23, so erm.</quote>

Hey I remember you:)That was one of the reasons for the move to the Curry House (funky pie may have been involved) not sure where the guys meet now I presume the meeting room the current lugmaster has access to in Heath Town.